The decentralisation of resource flows has significant effects of the roles of the innovation protagonists. Even though the innovation landscape itself essentially remains unchanged, the interactions across that landscape evolve toward unprecedented dynamics. The innovation landscape is shaped along two axes: problems that demand for a solution, and ideas for potential solutions. Within that landscape, we then find four different … Continue reading The effects of decentralisation in the innovation landscape
Tag: politics
How decentralisation enhances our innovation capacity
A few months ago, I started to take a deeper look into resource flows and how their patterns evolved over time. What the emerging flow patterns for information, energy, and material all have in common is the strong trend towards the decentralisation of distribution networks, which over time led to a genuine democratisation of access. As a result, today everybody can … Continue reading How decentralisation enhances our innovation capacity
Empowering innovation
Most often, the term empowering innovation is used as a synonym for disruptive innovation. For good reason, as these terms vividly describe two different views of the very same type of innovation: taking of complex and expensive product or service, and making it simpler and more affordable is the underlying definition that you'll have seen … Continue reading Empowering innovation
A vision for economics
What could our economy and society be like in thirty to forty, maybe even fifty years? Just doing the same things differently? Or doing really different things? What could those things be? And what could economics tell us about that far-term future? If you ask for such genuine vision, the reaction you'll most likely receive ranges somewhere between an innocent shrug and a linear extrapolation of the recent past: neither inspired nor very inspiring. With only few exceptions.
Why innovation policy must be innovative
About a year ago I came across the work of the historian and archaeologist Ian Morris, who observed that "change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways of doing things". This Morris Theorem essentially presents human sloth, greed, and fear as the key drivers for our society's appetite for change – change of our environment to our own benefit. That is what we call innovation: the purpose is an easier, richer, safer life for all of us.
understanding innovation 